


things that stop you dreaming

by exyjunkies



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, POV Second Person, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7424281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exyjunkies/pseuds/exyjunkies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A study on the progression of Neil and Andrew's relationship, from Neil's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	things that stop you dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> Title's taken from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ItrO33Hg48) by Passenger.

When you meet a boy **worth your attention** , it is, in some ways, easy, much like falling asleep.

The star-strung nights have slender fingers, hands you can’t easily grip, but when your eyes meet, you hear piano lullabies in the background. They’re soft, much like you aren’t expected to listen at all, but you do. The insomnia you’re used to fearing doesn’t strike this time around, but it waits, quietly, lurking in the shadows of your closet. The notes gently grab hold of the ears, and there’s nothing you can do about it, really.

And the funny thing is — it _should_  be loud, like waves crashing against the defenseless shore, like the violent whip-clash of thunder roaring in between storms, but _no_ , you aren’t deafened. It is _not_  hard for your head to hit the pillow, let your eyes droop down. There are no casualties in this calamity, but it doesn’t stop feeling like the predicted disaster your heart’s been readying itself for.

The two syllables which you learn make up his name aren’t really… _special_. Much like passing minutes, they aren’t what you pay attention to. Your mind prefers to register the crease in this boy’s forehead, the frown his eyebrows need to be eased of. Blond (almost… _golden_ , but not the color you’re used to, like how royalty’s made gold to look like, no, this is a different kind of richness) hair, sitting atop the features of a cutting-edge winter: all sharp cheekbones, piercing hazel eyes, a defined jaw. A mood used to bracing itself for the cold.

Looks that could kill, words that could keep you gasping for breath. You didn’t really _understand_ him, maybe because he didn’t want to be understood, but that’s how all the great mysteries are written out to be: cleverly scattered clues, all to be picked up on, never to be guessed upon. First glance is all for the wariness, the rest comes after.

It is only one challenge you are too willing to conquer. You’ve done this before, bigger devils have tried to drag you to hell, _this is fine_. 

(Even if, admittedly, you don’t know what the fuck you’re getting yourself into.)

-/-/-

When you **start to like** this boy, this is the moment your dreams come slow, the moments passing heavy as honey.

At some point you look at yourself in the mirror, and you wonder _how did this come to be_? You now find yourself listening for his two-syllable name, stethoscope heart searching for where it beats most. And you’re unsure if his heart belongs in the same hospital. It _scares_  you, _damn_ , what you wouldn’t give to stop feeling this way; you want to wake up, you want to stay up past ungodly hours, you want to keep your eyes _open_.

Except… you _don’t_. He slants a look at you, subtle, but there, and you think it’s not at you, but the air around you knows better. Maybe _that’s_ why it gets harder to breathe, and why it’s unbearable, but it is also thrilling, the excitement seeping through the lining of your bones.

 _It’s not another nightmare, asshole_ , your mind screams from somewhere within. You’re not used to this, because usually, the next part in the movie is you, crying and keeping it down, letting the tears fall onto the pillow. _It’s not another nightmare, but it is something good to sleep through._

Maybe it’s because you know the roof is his, but the possibility of it being yours isn’t too far from reach. You both have baggage you haven’t unloaded for fear of weighing the other down, but it is okay. A secret at a time, much like picking apart the puzzle after you buy it, is how you get there.

It’s not just the secrets, but what they carry with them. The whispers are louder than what you make them out to be, he’s just hoping he won’t have to shout for you. He gives you _this_ much, just a foot in the door, enough just to be able to see on tiptoe. You get the pieces he’s willing to plate for you: his addictions, his anger, his insults, his hatred. His brother, who’s not too excited about your eyes and how he has them. Nothing’s for the taking, the pieces too on-fire for them to be safe, but you reach out, cautiously, unmitigated. 

_“Keep it if you can, you and I both know it won’t last long.”_

Maybe he was _right_ , you think. You’ve never had anything in your hands for too long to be able to say it was yours. Ownership wasn’t something you were allowed to get used to; things were temporary. You ran away, you stayed, your life’s in danger _again_ , your life’s movie reel black & white and _broken_. Maybe this is the part where you’re supposed to usher him out of the cinema, scrub his memory clean of scenes that wasn’t supposed to see the light of day.

But trust was a foreign concept, and somehow, he made _you_ understand it. Even when you clearly saw just how much he couldn’t comprehend it all himself.

In all its messiness, its intricacy, you have a word for it. It’s wrapped around your snarky tongue like a vine sprouting from inside your chest, choking you, but not quite. But you don’t blurt it out _yet_ , for fear of ending the dream. 

You decide to try and understand more of it for him. 

-/-/-

When you **begin to love** this boy, this is the moment you wake up.

It happens when your eyes open— no, _really_ open, not just against the sun’s grinning face when it’s too harsh, or out of surrender for the alarm clock’s blaring,  _no_ , this is something else entirely. 

It’s how you feel when you look at him through the eyes of someone who’s been through the same tragedy, except you want to take all the hurt out of his system and put it in yours. _He doesn’t deserve it_ , you think, mind a trivial war of thoughts and emotions and nobody’s the victor. Life’s weathered you down more than it has him, you can take it more than he can, _why_ can’t the world give it all to _you_?

Then the realization comes full force, body on body, knife against knife. The world’s advances are being stopped by _him_ , _he’s_  trying to shield you from its cruelty, _he_  thinks you’re the oxygen everybody needs. He hates you for it, almost 100%, and he never fails to tell you so, but there’s also… _something else._

He’s made it painfully obvious, more than once, that he’d kill for you. Even going so far as to give you armbands black as nothingness, to remind you of what he had underneath his own, and what he’d use them for. Keeping the goal, he doesn’t care much about anything that happens on the court, but when someone so much as lays a finger on you, he’ll come barreling in, and he’s beaten some people to a pulp more than once, because nobody seems to _fucking listen_  whenever he gives the damn lesson. 

It’s a way of implying he hasn’t softened up, _not just yet_  — you’ll always have to be careful with broken glass. You’ve never stopped scouring the floor for a way around it all. He’s not yours to put back together, but maybe he’s yours to build upon.

And he looks at you like… like _that_ , and it makes question marks curl around your arms, a sheepishness taking over. You haven’t been insecure in forever, and you’ve never had a reason to feel like so. You’d hate for you to be the first one to ruin things, so you don’t comment on it, keep quiet about absolutely everything. 

You keep it going, because when you’re cross the sea in the middle of a typhoon, giving up means a faster way to drown.

When he can afford to, there are kisses, and sometimes, they’re  _just_ kisses, or even _more_ than kisses, just a lot of the mouths and tongues and saliva and teeth all colliding. You forget where the world begins or if it ends at all. All you know is tipping your head forward, leaning down as much as you need to, your hands in pockets while his hand slides around the back of your neck, pulling you in.

Then you’re against the wall, and it is just too much, this whole _being awake_ thing. You vaguely remember a time before you fell asleep, the terror that’s blanketed you all throughout, and feel a stir of disbelief at how _long_ it’s been. Then — his hand’s undoing your jeans, and his lips are leaving reminders all over your neck, and your hands are trying their _goddamned hardest_ not to reach out and touch him, because he’s not ready, and your mind short-circuits, _fuck_ , why did it take you _this_  long to wake up again? 

He asks,  _yes or no?_  and you’re barely there enough to nod, because the rest of you is somewhere else. It’s somewhere trying to figure out how to tell him, how to say  _shit, I think… or no, I know, that I lov—_

Your mind’s cut off and you jolt back into reality when his mouth’s down there, hands braced firmly on each of your hipbones. How it _feels_  is completely different from what he’s _telling you_  through it, and you take both on, the urgency and heaviness more than you’re used to handling. It is enough to make you scream, and swear, and dig your hands into his scalp, and cry, but he wouldn’t care much for anything but the first two, so that’s all you do.

In the middle of the sea, the only wave that splashes you is recognition; he’s never been one before, but he’s your anchor, and he’s keeping you here. 

He says, _stay_ , and, well, you’re not really going anywhere. You urge him back up and kiss this message back, hoping he gets it.

-/-/-

Finally, when it hits you, when you’ve **fallen in love** — _god_ , that’s when you look back on all those hours wasted sleeping when you’ve could’ve been _alive_. 

And it’s _over;_  the hell you’ve been going through has reached a standstill. _No more running_ , the sun says from behind your curtains, rays a soft smile. You lift an eyelid at this whisper of a truth, bigger than you’ll ever grasp, and murmur something you won’t remember. 

A grunt, or a grumble, is sounded in response from behind you, and you turn around to face the source, never mind that it’s too early to be annoying.

He’s looking at you, the edges of a glare already starting, and he tries to hide it, he _does_ , but you see behind the pessimistic facade. 

It’s taken you both quite some time be this comfortable around the touching, more so him than you. The ghosts, well— they’re never really going to _go away_ , but the nights don’t see a lot of them around anymore. There are and will always be nightmares, violently thrashing behind eyelids, and this holds true for both you and him, but maybe it’s enough that there’s something infinitely better to wake up now that you have each other. 

A few weeks from now, he’ll be leaving, and you’ll be starting a year with him off somewhere else, but this doesn’t really trouble you. You almost lost your life because of your father, but by some grace or another, you’re still living, still existing, still very much _here_. You don’t know if you deserve it, but he’ll be there to tell you how much you make his life more unbearable and irritating, and you have to admit, there is _some_  value to each time he does.

You can only hope that you’re enough to keep his life’s corpses and graves well behind him, that his being here is more than anything one might think is important. You’d hold his hand and walk through the cemetery in his backyard if that was what it took to grow flowers in it.

Still, it never fails to amaze you how different he is now that you’ve got him like this. He’s still the same hardhearted, difficult asshole you met the first time around, but around you, he can afford to let all that down. The castle walls are only up when the army’s against an enemy, and it’s been so long since the last time he fought against all of it. He’s _letting_  you, and that’s more than you could’ve ever imagined to get from him. 

Your mouth feels like it’s curling an apostrophe at the side, and you have to stifle a laugh at the face he makes. It’s _adorable_ , and you’re thinking, _I did this, I softened him up_. 

Nothing’s been said between the two of you. There’s a bone-deep secret thrumming against the wall of your chest, and you haven’t let it out, but it’s okay, because you can hear his own secret knocking against the whole of his own body. It’s enough to stun you into a silence, these days, but he never asks why. _Maybe he knows_. 

When it comes up, it’ll be loud, and wonderful, and _ironic,_  because this started out soft, a mere lullaby, notes to eyes coming to a close.

For now, it is enough that you’re seeing him through the eyes of this somewhat golden morning. You’ve _finally_ reached that point in your life when you’re more than just awake. 

You’re _alive_ , and everyday, you get to thank yourself for that one time you let yourself _fall asleep_.

**Author's Note:**

> This was initially posted to fulfill [a prompt on Tumblr](http://exyjunkies.tumblr.com/post/147075911027/could-you-please-write-something-about-the)! Send me more, if you have any :D
> 
> Comments are always, always appreciated!!!!


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